


Teach Them How To Bow Their Heads

by mythbusterposey



Category: The Lone Ranger (2013)
Genre: 5 + 1, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-20 14:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4791035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythbusterposey/pseuds/mythbusterposey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...before it steals their fate - "The Devil's Train", Hank Williams // AKA 5 Times John Reid Should've Died and 1 Time He Should've Lived</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1846

**Author's Note:**

> The Devil's Train is long and black  
> It rides on rails of fear  
> It's headin' for destruction now  
> With a drunken engineer

"But Dan I don't want to climb up there!" Little 10-year old John's voice whined up the face of the mountainside. His older brother didn't seem to listen to any of his objections, only kept climbing up, up, and away.

"What was that, John? You're on your way up?"

"NO." The big-mouthed little brother bellowed. Surely John would've heard that.

"I think if you start now, you'll still have a chance to beat me to the top!"

"Dan this isn't Miss Parker's apple tree, you could DIE if you-"

"You're not gonna die, John." Dan muttered, yet John could still hear him all the way from the bottom.

With the same exact face their dog Mopey makes when they leave for school in the morning, John started to climb. Dan didn't look down, because he was already 50 feet up in the air, but he could hear his little brother's frustrated grunts as his soft little hands found handgrips up the mountainside. Those hands have only ever endured the soft pages of books. Their mama didn't like them working out on the farm like Rebecca, because she was just an uneducated farm girl.

If there's one thing the Reid brothers stood the same stance on, it was Rebecca Marshall. They'd both kicked up quite a storm when their mama had said that, and John had cried and sniveled and Dan had sulked and glowered. Rebecca was one of their closest friends, seeing as all the other kids in school were either five years younger or five years older than them. They'd miraculously survived those two waves of sickness in their early years, but only just barely. Dan remembers being seven years old and looking at his frail little brother in bed, bundled up to his ears shivering. The whole family was certain they were going to lose that tow-headed little boy, and were so relieved when they didn't.

When Dan was about ten feet from the top, he peeked down at John's progress. Like he'd said, they were at less of a distance from one another by now. The cliff they were scaling was about a hundred feet tall, but at an angle, so they could take rests anytime they wanted to. Dan always wondered how his little brother, gifted with so much energy and so much skill at things like climbing and trash talking and shooting squirrels and whistling, could stand to just sit still and stare at ink on a page for hours and hours and hours. Made no sense to him.

Dan pushed himself up over the top and laid flat on his belly to poke his head over the side in case John needed a hand up. As soon as he had looked over, John was breaching the edge, and knocked away Dan's helping hand.

John was covered in more dirt and sand from that one climb than he normally allowed himself to be over the course of a month. It was turning his golden blonde hair ashy and gray in some places, and smudged all over his face. In the dying light, he could make out that there were no tear-tracks down those ruddy little cheeks that puffed out whenever he was mildly inconvenienced. "Proud o'you, Johnny." Dan shoved his hand through John's hair, shaking the dust loose from it. John coughed as it fell in front of his face and scowled at his older brother.

"Why are we even up here?" he asked with an attitude that would earn him a lick of the belt normally.

Dan grinned at the sharpness in his little brother's tongue. "Because up here's the best view of the stars. Until we can climb the Caldera, of course."

"That's a load of it, Dan, the stars look the same from back in town."

"A load of what?"

" _It,_ Dan."

"A load of shhhhh..."

A small grin broke onto John's face. "...it."

They both laughed with their heads together like they were sharing a secret.

Dan broke out a blanket he'd had in his pack, and they spread it out on the flat top of the cliff. They lay back and searched for the first-shining stars of the night. John knew all their names, but Dan knew all their stories. They just talked back and forth about the feats of old Roman heroes and mythical Greed gods (and John got a little flustered talking about other gods, because well they all know they're not real and what with God being so close to them right now and all) but before long, the moon started to shine and illuminate the entire world.

Everything was held captive in time. The brothers were no longer looking skyward, but toward the direction of home. White blanketed them like the time they saw snow when they visited Uncle Michael and Aunt Mary up in Illinois two years ago. But tonight, the warm breeze of the plains rolled from the forests on the edge of the caldera. They could see so much it's like seeing with the eyes of God.

Hushed, astonished whispers are shared back and forth, pointing out a wild horse on its own here and maybe that's our house there. They never wanted to leave that moment.

And with what happened next, Dan wished they never actually did.

When they both decided to call it a night and head back down, John started down the cliff first, and Dan followed. They were still both excitedly chattering over the night, and how amazing it was seeing the stars and the moon and everything. Then John's voice changed from hushed and exhilarated to desperate and scared. "Dan?"

Dan looked down and saw his little brother scrambling for a root, a rock, a hold, but everything seemed to be crumbling apart in his hands. "John!" Dan tried climbing down faster but by then, John was already peeling off the side of the cliff. Their eyes locked for a moment before Dan watched his little brother fall away from him, his short little body tumbling all the way down the cliff.

He couldn't move from the hold he has. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't blink, he couldn't think. Carelessly, he practically slid down the cliff-face, whispering his brother's name desperately, like a prayer. God had been watching them from up above, why couldn't He have been watching them as they descended back to earth? He could hardly locate his brother's crumpled body among the soft blue shadows at the base where they'd started.

Dan ran over to John's lifeless form and held him in his arms, weeping and cursing and begging him to please wake up, don't be dead. It terrified him to not know if it was the shadows making his lips blue or if it was the life draining from them. He went quiet after awhile. How's he gonna live with this, knowing he lead his baby brother to his death?

But then.

Oh, then.

Almost as if God was shaking them both awake, John starts coughing in Dan's arms, and sits up all on his own. "Whuh." he gasps. Dan was startled, and almost hollered, but then he recognized what was going on and hollered anyway, picking his brother up and spinning him around and dusting him off. "What're you DOIN'?" John shouted, so different from his usual prim-and-proper tongue. 

"You're alive! You fell practically from the top! You're ALIVE! How are you alive?! I h-held you in my arms, I thought you were dead!"

"I TOLD you this was a bad idea!" John seemed to regain his usual straightlaced composure at that.

"But you're alive now so don't tell mama."

"Dan are you crying?"

"NO." Dan said in that Reid boy tone. 

Dan asked him how he did it all the way home, but John only ever answered with a "I have no idea".

 


	2. 1854

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Devil's Train will take you  
> To a land of groans and pain  
> You'll spend your days in sorrow  
> If you ride that Devil's Train

When John turned 18, he couldn't wait to get out of Colby, head out to the big city, go to college, start his life for once. He loved his family, and missed his mama like an ache since she died, but there was only one other woman keeping him in town.

Rebecca.

He and Dan and she had been thick as thieves for years, almost all their lives. But lately, Dan had been a little too close for comfort. And John, unassuming as he can be, decided that her acceptance of his gentle touches and gestures of affection meant she loved him back. It was quite a pity, actually. Every time he looked away, she was looking at him, just as longing as he was.

When Dan announced over dinner that he and Rebecca were getting married, John had pushed himself up from the table and dropped his kerchief on the plate. The door slammed on his way out.

Red and black dotted the edges of his vision as he strode out into town, long legs putting distance between himself and the bad news. He somehow ended up at a bar, his nose deep in a glass of something harsher than what he'd had to swallow an hour ago. A part of his mind nagged that he was spectacularly rude in front of his father and brother, but at this point, his aching heart did nothing to help him  _care._

When John Reid got to drinking, he got to getting rowdy, rowdier and more troublesome than even Dan. He ended up on the table, instigating a bar brawl, hollering the doors off the place, talking trash at anyone who got within swinging distance. He felt  _great_. 

It was just a matter of time before he started making threats and promises to men he wouldn't look too long at on a brave day. A duel at sunrise here, some kind of bet involving his shoes, everyone in the bar hated him and wanted to buy him drinks at the same time. But then he accidentally bumped into a girl as he was walking out, and the man she belonged to for the night saw fit to acquaint John's face with his fist, repeatedly.

The brawl resumed and started packing heat, and someone dragged John out of the bar right quick.

The cold blast of desert air brought all of his sorrows right back to the forefront of his mind. He loved Rebecca more, why didn't she love him back? Why didn't Dan have the decency to just mind his own business for once?

"You cut that out, John." a gruff voice at his ear scoffed. Dan.

John blamed the drink, but he took a swing at him. It would've horrified him, normally, had he made a connection, but he was spared that humiliation. At least he could still hit him.

"Quit it!" he said.

"No YOU quit it, so friggin NOSEY all the time, nose in my business."

"What are you going on about?" Dan asked with a sigh.

"Rebecca. How could you. How COULD you?" John realized he has that heavy feeling in his gut and that tight feeling in his throat that meant he was about to  _really_ embarrass himself in a second.

Dan just let him keep going.

"I could love her ten times more and ten times better than you!" John hollered, voice rough with emotion and unshed tears he denied lurking behind his eyes. It killed Dan to see him like this, but for Rebecca, he could find no remorse. He just acted first, acted on his feelings before John did. He shouldn't feel guilty about being brave.

John eventually burned himself out into silence. Dan looked over at his brother and saw his thunderous face staring down at the ground, scrunched up in pain and wet from his pain spilling over. Dan was the better man, and knew not to hurt his brother's gentle pride at a time like this. John was leaving for Virginia soon, anyways. The stagecoach would be coming in a week and leaving with John on it. Dan wasn't gonna leave Rebecca feeling alone, ever. He was never leaving Colby. It was always John not fitting into their hometown's status quo. John wasn't tough enough for Texas, brave enough for love, or man enough to admit he was too late. Dan looked away. Their dad would've killed John if he knew he was sniveling and crying over Rebecca Marshall, of all the girls in Texas.

They were almost back at their house on the edge of town when a shout called to them from down the street.

"John Reid! You promised me a duel!"

Dan looked incredulously at his brother, who had since dried it up and resumed his ramrod-straight posture and indifferent attitude. "What did you do  _now,_ John..." Dan groaned, turning around to face Billy C.R. Taylor, the general store owner's son, walking down the middle of the main road. He had a stupid mean look on his face, a sneer that looked more like he'd just gotten a mouthful of horse manure.

Taylor repeated what he'd said fifty paces ago. The Reid brothers stopped in unison to turn and face him. "A duel?" John asks, voice still a little slurred from his rather tumultuous evening.

"You challenged Billy Taylor to a duel?" Dan hissed. John seemed to recoil a bit at that. "Do you even know how to shoot a gun?"

"Of course I do, I'm not an idiot!" John hissed right back. By then, Taylor was ten paces away.

"We gon' do this, or're you jus' gon' gawk there like a dead bird on a cactus?"

"What are you on about, Billy?" Dan asked, rolling his eyes.

"I ain't askin' anything o' you,  _Dan._ My business is with your baby brother here, who thought he was fit to start talkin' his fancy lawyer talk up in my bar tonight." He looked awful pleased with himself to be insulting higher intelligence, which gave almost nothing away to his character, surely.

"Let me get this straight: you're getting mad because John is talking about going to college?" Dan asked incredulously.

"We gon' duel?!" Taylor hollered, his goons gathering around to support him. John seemed to have gone white as a sheet.

John couldn't quite discern what on earth was happening, because the aforementioned earth was spinning around him horribly. He thought he saw birds - no, crows - flying around his head. Dan sounded angry, everyone sounded angry, but he distinctly felt the weight of a pistol line up in his hands, Dan's familiar hands patting him on the shoulder even though he wanted nothing but to lay down for awhile, being spun around and told to march ten paces.

Someone yelled, "Draw!" and John spun on his heel. That was too much for his stomach to handle, so his finger squeezed the trigger the same time he felt a bullet whizz by his head, the same time he decided to empty the contents of his stomach onto the dirt below. His head felt hot and dizzy.

The next few moments were a blur. He remembered Dan pulling him up under his armpit, taking the pistol away, dragging him home. Not exactly words, no, but he couldn't quite move any part of his body for a long, long time.

He faded in and out of consciousness multiple times that day, Dan changing bandages, someone telling him to sip at some water, the like. He felt...surreal. His dreams were filled with black feathers and the pounding of drums - no, horse hooves - and he was so sure he had a fever, because he's never dreamed about birds in his life. He must have hit his head.

He learns from Rebecca in one of her last letters to him that he'd shot a hole straight through the top of Billy C.R. Taylor's hat, and gotten a nasty graze on the side of his head. They thought they'd lost him multiple times before he woke up. He'd mumbled something funny, after one of those last bouts, and he'd been fine right after. Rebecca wanted to know where he'd learned to speak Indian from. He'd written Dan telling him to keep his wife from asking such embarrassing questions.

She'd stopped writing after that.


End file.
